Last week more than 100,000 South Koreans demonstrated against the newly elected President Lee Myung-bak as his entire Cabinet offered to resign. At the root of this massive protest was not a declaration of war against North Korea, a boycott of the Chinese Summer Olympics, or even escalating oil prices. It was a treaty allowing U.S. beef imports.
Beef production accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than automobiles. Its insatiable demand for feed grains has raised world food prices to levels beyond the reach of the world’s hungry and the relief agencies that support them. Creation of pastures for beef cattle is the key cause of worldwide deforestation, including the destruction of the Amazon rain forest. A beef-based diet requires more than 20 times as much land and water as a plant-based diet with equivalent amounts of calories and protein.
Nutritionally, beef offers protein, iron and some B vitamins, but no fiber, no carbohydrates and few vitamins and minerals. On the other hand, it is replete with saturated fat, cholesterol, pesticides and pathogens, including, occasionally, the prions of mad cow disease.
We should have 100,000 demonstrators marching on Washington to protest taxpayer subsidies to the U.S. beef industry. In the meantime, each one of us can demonstrate our own outrage at beef production on our next trip to the supermarket by selecting from the rich variety of soy- and-plant-based meat alternatives in the frozen food and produce sections.
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